1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic systems located upon a semiconductor substrate and more specifically to the addressable, electronic system located upon a single substrate.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The use of slices which are sections of round silicon to fabricate semiconductor integrated circuits has long been known and is used in the semiconductor industry. The slices are also called wafers and include several individual integrated circuits on a single wafer. It is part of the normal manufacturing process to dice the wafer and separate each of the individual integrated circuits contained on the wafer for packaging in dual in-line packages or flat packages as desired.
The object of this present invention is to provide an overall electronic system that includes the interconnection of the individual integrated circuits contained on the wafer. The prior art contains a similar type of system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,758,761, entiled "Self-Interconnecting/Self-Repairable Electronic Systems on a Slice" by W. S. Henrion and assigned to Texas Instruments Incorporated. The difference between the prior art and the present invention is that the present invention provides a programmable capability to select selected integrated circuits contained on the slice or wafer.
This selectivity is made possible by nonvolatile memory. Nonvolatile random access memories have been recently developed consisting of a CMOS RAM with a backup battery produced by Catalyst Research Corporation and called the Catalyst Research Lithium Iodine Cell. Other nonvolatile random access memory cells have been disclosed in Electronics, Sept. 22, 1981, in an article entitled, "4K RAM as Nonvolatile Backup Array", pp. 179, 180 and a technical article in Electronics, Oct. 11, 1979, entitled "5 Volt Only, Nonvolatile RAM Owes It All to Polysilicon", on pp. 111-116.